Well, Doug told me to come and nose around and see what I could find
in the way of clues. Want to come out and have a look with me? You two
Palefaces might as well learn something about gumshoeing a villain now
as ever."

Lots of boys, and grown-up people for that matter, like to keep
interesting things and doings to themselves; but Tony Luttrell is as
generous in disposition as he is in mouth.

We went out to the shed with him, and Lovelace Peyton went too, but
refused to come in the shed door because he said he was still on honor
to the Idol, no matter what Roxanne said, not to come nearer than one
yard, which was marked with sticks all around the shed. It was funny
to see the snake-doctor lean across the dead-line and crane his sweet
little neck to try to hear and see Tony inside the shed. And after
Tony had squinted at and touched and nosed almost every inch of the
shed, he came out with his hands in his pockets.

"Any clue?" asked Roxanne, as anxiously as Roxanne could ask about
anything from the cloud.

"N--o," he said in a hesitating sort of way that seemed just as
professional as the way the detectives talk in the wonderful stories
in the magazines that my governess always reproved me for reading.
"That was a slick artist who got away on greased heels, but there is
a--smell in there that I've never felt before in the shed. And yet I
have met it somewhere, I feel certain. It seems to my nose somewhat
like the bug-doctor at his worst."

"No, Tony," said Lovelace Peyton, positively but perfectly calmly, "I
ain't been in that shed and my bottles ain't got legs."

We all laughed and came to the house--but I had got a whiff of that
odor and I knew where I had met it before. It was raw onion and tar,
and it was the mixture that Lovelace Peyton had given Father in the
bottle he wrapped in his handkerchief and put in his pocket. I felt
weak all over for a second, but I immediately remembered my duty to
respect my father even in my thoughts. I had decided that in the
watches of last night, after I had found his heart and hugged it up
outside of Mother's door.

In the first place, I had no business to read those magazines that my
governess told me not to, even if she did have so little sense that
her brain must have been made of tatting work originally, which she
was always doing by the yard. And while the explanation of what an
evil it is to get millions and millions of dollars together when the
poor have so litt